Retail market review conclusions

ORR’s Retail Market Review focused on who sells tickets, what tickets are sold, where and how tickets are sold, and the ticket format. We considered this from the point of view of the industry rules and practices that govern how all retailers (train operating companies (TOCs) and third party retailers) sell tickets.

Our conclusions

Our conclusions document pdf icon PDF, 670 Kb to the Retail Market Review discussed our recommendations and TOCs’ commitments to improve the way they make decisions that affect third party retailers; it sets out our findings regarding the merits of TOCs’ ability to discount fares and to restrict their distribution; and it explains the progress we, industry and governments have made regarding the other recommendations we made in June 2015 to facilitate competition and to improve collaboration among retailers.

What we have done:

The Retail Market Review involved three public consultations, two industry workshops and primary research about passengers’ views on ticketing. Further information on this work is available below:

An initial call for evidence document in February 2014 that sought stakeholders' views on our initial thinking on the scope and approach of the review;

Market research undertaken by BDRC Continental to understand passengers' views on rail ticketing, including how well the integrated retail model works from their perspective and what value it brings; and

Stakeholder workshops

ORR has hosted two stakeholder workshops for the review of the rail retail market. A note of each workshop, that summarises the main points of discussion, and the presentation slides used are available below.